Porter Moser Looking For 'Length, Athleticism, Shooting' to Improve Oklahoma in Year 3
Oklahoma walked into the Big 12 Tournament with a clear picture of the challenge ahead.
After a disappointing regular season, the Sooners needed to win four straight games in Kansas City to make the NCAA Tournament.
OU’s first hurdle would be its in-state rivals, Oklahoma State, who swept Porter Moser’s team in the regular season.
Instead of rising to the occasion and recapturing the tournament edge Moser flashed at Loyola Chicago, what ensued was an offensive horror show.
With the season on the line, the Sooners posted their worst scoring output in a year of dreadful offensive displays, losing to the Cowboys 57-49.
Moser’s program took a massive step back in Year 2.
Last year, the Sooners arrived at the Big 12 Tournament needing wins to make the Big Dance, and Oklahoma almost pulled it off.
OU toppled Baylor and pushed Texas Tech to the limit, just missing out on the NCAA Tournament and finishing as one of the top four seeds in the NIT.
This year, bracket experts had long given up on considering Oklahoma in their projections, and earning a bid to the NIT as a 15-17 squad feels like a pipe dream — not that OU wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to play postseason basketball.
“I always like to compete. It's in my blood, and I want to compete,” Moser said after the loss on Wednesday night. “… I don't want to stop coaching Tanner Groves, if it's the opportunity. So my mind hasn't been there yet, so I've got to process that. But I know just the way I'm wired, I just love to compete.”
In all likelihood, Wednesday’s contest against Oklahoma State will be the last time Moser and Groves take the floor together, and now Moser must turn his attention to improving his roster in the offseason.
Oklahoma’s work will have to start with a center who can positively impact the game.
Through two offseasons, Moser has landed Groves, Ethan Chargois and Sam Godwin out of the transfer portal.
All three struggled to rebound and defend in conference play, a big reason why Moser is 13-26 against Big 12 foes since arriving at Oklahoma, including a combined 1-8 against Oklahoma State and Texas.
But simply adding a Big 12 quality center won’t be enough for the Sooners to hang around in conference play next year.
“I think we need to improve our shooting,” Moser said. “We need to improve our length and athleticism in this league. We need to get old and stay old.
“… But I think we've got to increase our length, athleticism, shooting to start with there. That will start this spring recruiting. I think we've got to continue to be better offensively.”
Oklahoma's Jalen Hill tries to attack the basket in OU's 57-49 loss to Oklahoma State on opening night of the 2023 Big 12 Tournament
William Purnell / USA TODAY Sports
Simply finding length and athleticism won’t necessarily translate to production at Oklahoma, however.
Joe Bamisile was supposed to add both attributes to OU’s roster this season after transferring to Norman from George Washington.
The 6-foot-4 guard averaged 16.3 points and five rebounds per game in the Atlantic 10 last year, and his highlight reel had Sooner fans dreaming of an explosiveness OU lacked in Moser’s first season in charge.
Instead, Bamisile was relegated to the bench. He logged just 240 minutes this season, averaging four points and 2.3 rebounds per game.
To “grow old” as Moser would say, Oklahoma will also need to continue developing the young pieces of the team.
By the end of the year, the Sooners were starting a pair of true freshman in Milos Uzan and Otega Oweh, hoping to develop the duo as the year pressed on.
“I think we're the only team (in the Big 12) that started two freshmen,” Moser said. “So those are two guys that logged in a lot of minutes. We've got to keep developing those guys and get better development.”
Uzan especially flashed promise, as he was selected to the Big 12 All-Freshman Team this year, but Moser will also have to break a trend line from his first year on the development front too.
C.J. Noland was also a Big 12 All-Freshman Team selection for the 2021-22 season under Moser, and he even entered this year as a starter.
That only lasted eight games, as Noland was replaced by Uzan in the starting lineup in OU’s ninth game of the season against Kansas City.
Noland’s role continued to diminish as the year pressed on, and he only contributed 3.2 points and 1.3 rebounds per game when he was called upon.
Now, Noland originally committed to former OU coach Lon Kruger and reaffirmed his commitment to Moser after the coaching change. Perhaps the development path will be more consistent for Uzan and Oweh, a pair of Moser recruits, but the Sooners can’t afford for either of the duo to fall off next year or transfer this offseason if Oklahoma is to continue to build into the 2023-24 campaign.
And that’s all before the likes of Jalen Hill, Grant Sherfield, Bijan Cortes and Noland make decisions on if they’ll return to Norman next season.
Moser does have a pair of high school signees in Ada's Kaden Cooper and Bellaire, TX, produce Jacolb Cole, giving OU another pair of freshman to integrate this offseason.
Even playing in the toughest conference in America, the expectations were high this season inside the program.
“We expected to win every game,” Moser said. “… As daunting as the schedule was, I thought (the players) believed they could win every game. I thought they believed we could win it, and we competed with some of the best teams in the country in some of the best venues in the country, Kansas, Texas. And we were right there, but we fell short. So I thought we took steps, and I really feel like behind the scenes, the prep, they believed.
“We've got to get better. We've got to get better. It starts with me, starts with development, starts with recruiting in a lot of areas, but we've got to get better.”
If the Sooners don’t get better in a hurry, they’ll once again be in a fight at the bottom of the Big 12 in the program’s final trip through the league before heading off to the SEC.
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